What's the issue?

Short lets (such as Airbnb) sucks homes out of residential use. Much-needed housing is turned from homes into holiday and leisure lets. Communities are broken up as locals move further away to find affordable housing. Meanwhile, short-let properties stand empty for half the year and businesses struggle to survive in ghost towns and villages.

Airbnb alone has driven a 1000% increase in homes lost to short-letting in just 5 years.

Every red dot is an Airbnb listing.

Many of those listings will be places that could be a home.

[Data from insideairbnb.com/london]

We campaign for empty homes to be brought into use for people in housing need. Short-let and Airbnb properties ARE empty homes. These are properties that could be homes for families.

What are we doing about it?

We are campaigning for communities across England to be able to set local controls through licensing and locally agreed limits on change of use of housing. This is possible in Scotland and Wales but England's communities are currently unprotected.

Recently, we campaigned and received a lot of media coverage (you may have seen some of it, here and here) which got Government thinking about change - they are considering 'consulting' on change of use legislation. We must keep up the pressure NOW to protect our communities.

Let's work together to stop short-lets and Airbnb destroying our communities and sucking away our much-needed housing stock.

You can support our Campaign to regulate short-lets here.